Up Yours, Dear Kenyan Mangina: Go Suck a Real Dick |

“Women always talking ‘bout what men, do, we don’t ever talk about what

women do…at least till now.”

- Ying Yang Twins, NAGGING.

Yuh heard? 

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, you said?


Give. me. a fucking break. I will now pretend you felt the sense to see that as the exclamation - from within your own little hell’s kitchen - which it truly is.


I have been watching you, skunk. Regarding your every move with suspicion, as you waltz from convention to the next, heels held at the ready to poke out the next mansplaining eye you meet.


And you meet them.


Everywhere you look, you see them. You actively seek them out, your funky 3-week soggy sock attitude stinking up every space you crawl into, every hole you skunk through. It’s lonely on your side of the bed, and you take it out on every little wanker with his dick out between his hands.


Because he is OBVIOUSLY creaming for your loins. How could he not be? Look at you and all that you 'guts going on'. Look at him as he sits and gropes and gapes at your *big brain*.


Who the fuck told Kenyan "feminists" that they could sit around and mutually masturbate, in their little regurgitating rooms, fixing their makeup just right, and proclaim a ‘crisis for the mens’ every two bloody cycles menstrual flows seconds?

"I know you're lying coz your lips are moving..."

- Meghan Trainor, Lips Are Movin'

Who, dear little winner with the silenced little weiner, whack-slapped your little brain so far up her ass that you lap up and spit out everything she says up like the little mongrel she has made you?


Who the fuck made cuckolding mainstream?



I went for the Storymoja Hay Festival last year. A mensed up bloody mess of a thing it has become lately, yet perfectly so. It is a representation of a little cosmetic cosmos we like to call a second or third cumming of the liberal Kenya. It lives in small dark "enlightened" crevices it calls *spaces* in Nairobi, arrogantly proclaiming its ignorance whenever a chance presents itself.


Now at this festival, there was perhaps no more indicative a bullshit session of Kenya’s faux liberati scum as the forum dubbed ,“The! Future! of Men!: What is it like to be a man in Kenya today? of Men!: What is it like to be a man in Kenya today?”

Continues here: click at your own fucking peril

The Return of MOI: Kenya's Post Erection Insolence

Everybody loses it, I have oft found, continue to find. Perhaps this is why, in writing this piece, I sat and took a long hard think as to how I'd say what I need say, and appear not to bitch. Appearances, however, are a tart cliché filled with deceptive pastry.

This is not a bitch post. My mother had it tested.

I have also oft found that I disappoint people a lot. More on appearances -- remember them? -- than it is on the deliberate intention to deceive. The appearance that I fit into a box: the 'one of us' box; the 'not for us' box; the 'uptight' box; 'the easy-go-lucky' box...and much more recently, the '(not) Kumbaya my Lord' boxes. 

Recently, however, a new series of boxes has seemed to emerge. The 'serious', 'loaded' or 'seriously loaded' box, depending on where the boxer stands. 

You see, I decided to start a company. I have done business before, but this time I chose to go it the long hard narrow way that is incorporation in Kenya. 

Being as I find action to be incorporated in thought and speech, I talked about the company; it was soon to be that the company took on a life of its own. A story, one oft finds, that I will tell another day; since that is not why we're assembled in this dark cyber room, pretending to speak to you. 

We're gathered here today, dear brethren and sirens, to cast our minds back to the days when Kenya was born. 50 years ago, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong. 

In fact, Wrong Turn kinda-dead wrong.

Kenya was born of the fecal matter that sprung out of the Race for Africa. Just in case the wording fools you, we're talking about race in a 'Hey ye! hey ye! scramble, let us partition Africa's scrambled eggs' kinda way. 

The Race for Africa. Not the colored race, nor the colorful races. 

Those races are not the kind we speak of. The race we do, today, is the same one that invaded - and continues to invade - the dusty 1, cave-dwelling 2, Provincial Roman populace 3 now known as Africa. The same one that occupied, annexed -- and continues to occupy, annex -- this land, named for all intents and purposes after some king-doomed place, in or around present-day Tunisia4. 

The race -- your History books will tell you, if you bother yourself with them -- that colonized and civilized my ancestors. It continues to colonize and civilize their children's great grand children.

The Race for Africa. The only race that has been for Africa. The violent race; a bloody winner-takes-all race; one that named, shamed and took Africa, continues to name, shame and take Africa.

The capital race; a Capitalist's race wrought in steel, iron and capital murder; not a colored race, nor a colorful race.

Even the people who live in the continent called Africa certainly are not for it. They spring from it, in more ways than one. They are sometimes born in it, into it; sometimes they choose to live in it, fly into it. 

Always fly in. 

You don't hear Amistad-like stories of people drowning in their boat-fulls; on their way from Spain, crossing the 15 odd Strait of Gibraltar kilometers into Morocco, and to the blissful freedom of oblivion's claws.

The Strait of Gibraltar as seen from space by NASA, 14 April 1994.
(North is to the left: The Iberian Peninsula is on the left; North Africa on the right)

What you do hear, is those born in it, when given the Green chance, springing the blank off of her sperm-fulls of potential blanks. If they're lucky enough to be worth their host country economy's while.

Yes sir, Frank Njenga sir! Ladies first...

The people of Africa, as she is now, spring from Africa. Spring; not from what it was when it wasn't Africa, but from what it is since it has been Africa. For over half a century towards the 19th Century's close of business, before the boss said there would be no pay for overtime, the dusty slum-dwellers of the black land were prepped. 

Lubed, more like, by a hegemony -- an informal governance, if you will -- of military superiority and economic dominance. That, and the influencing promise of slave-ship detours to Religiosity.

Long before the land- and mind- grabbing began -- long before the lines drew, the mines blew -- there lived a Berber named Leo Africanus. The Moorish 16th Century diplomat and author is said to have written of the land west of the Nile Valley, in a Descrittione dell'Africa.  A Description of Africa in which he proposed that his home was aphrike, from the Greek Αφρική. With the suffix φρική, meaning "cold and horror", and a prefix that to this day means 'without', he described his home as being 'without cold or fear/ horror.' He is also said to have traveled to Timbuktu and back - literally, before it became a European byword for inaccessibility.

He never once crossed the Sahara, nor saw Nigeria, Kenya or South Africa. He did see a lot of the Songhai Empire, travel through Cairo to Constantinople and Bologna. Go figure. 

The Rhodes Colossus: Caricature of Cecil John Rhodes, after he announced plans for a telegraph line and railroad from Cape Town to Cairo. December, 1892.

The irony that you - supposedly - are going to figure, is that the man after whom Africa was more likely christened 5:

• did not see most of what he described, but rather relied on what he was informed of. 

• did not see Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa, countries supposedly synonymous with Africa today. See Africa Rising narrative.

• quite possibly did not intend to describe any more than his own knowledge. That is, he described what lands he conquered -- also later known as 'discovered' -- in his travels. Mostly North Africa; this he compared, one might imagine, to what else he had seen. Namely some bits and pieces of Italia, Anatolia (Asia Minor) and what lay in between.

This is what became of Leo's knowledge, in 1600.

 'A Geographical Historie of Africa' was proclaimed.

To Africanus, however, aphrike was what he knew; and he certainly knew a lot. Quite like many of our own leaders, wannabe leaders and pretend leaders today do. He had read, you see. He had been told, you will find. He had also traveled and seen some, and concluded that what he had seen -- related to what he had read, and been told to think -- was true. 

He had not, one finds, experienced every nook and cranny of what landmass became Africa; much - again - like many of our African Union peeps. Peeps who be presidents: many simply peeping abroad and sipping high teas as their small portions of the cake Africa rot in their mouths.

I am no apologist of Europe - or Britain, for that matter - in as far as her Colonial History is concerned.  I am no apologist of Africa -- or Kenya, for that matter -- in as far as her recovery, or pretense thereof from said history, is concerned. 

But; inasmuch as facts be considered, then the following remain true:

• Kenya is not Kenya for Kenya's interests.

• Neither is Africa for her own interests.

• Being Kenyan, Ugandan, Burkinabe or South African (what does this even mean? Where does South begin?) counts for naught in as far as bread puts up tables.

Who, pray tell then, is African? Who is Kenyan?

I am who I am. I think -- dream even -- but not like Umair Haque does, or thinks I should or shouldn't. I do, but not like my brother and friend Boniface Mwangi  may or may not think I should. I say, but not as my good foreign friends -- TED -- and gooder local enemies -- GOK -- think I should. 

My thinking -- my dreaming, even -- and my doings and sayings, are my own. They should not come to be sought to presume that I have this, that or that there. This being money and women, as they go together... oh so tenderly well. That being expensive phones... and that there?

That there being leadership. 

Because I will, by default, likely disappoint these boxes. At the very least, my appearance will.

      .::0 To be continued 0::.

Ps: This is still not a bitch post. It was the return of moi, French for me. Or the return of My Own Interests. Or the return of President Moi. 

To see what actual bitch posts look like, contact me here, here and here. They may or may not really be bitchy.
____________________

1-4. From Africa's Etymology, see hypotheses on: dust, cave, Africa Province - capital city being Carthage - and Ifriqya - being modern-day Tunisia.

5. My own presumption, based on little actual knowledge.

* The next installment of today's piece features: Kenya's colony, and how it led us to where and who we are to date, our post election insolence, and 'my own interests' culture... 

DISCLAIMER: It may or may not be titled as follows. 

"From Kenya to Africa: One Big School Full OF FAKE Bitches."

Post-Election Insolence: Same Script, Same Cast, Different Lanes (Part I)

April 26th, 2013: 

Under the influence of an inspired State House PR team, and a brilliant presidential speech-writer, I find myself in the unfamiliar position of becoming President Kenyatta’s unofficial fan-boy. And going by my Social Media timelines, it would seem that I’m not the only Kenyan above the ignorance of tripping over myself at what must be this president’s burliest mascot – his smoke, pun unintended, and mirrors.

There was the YouTube video of bloopers from the campaign trail, aired live on Citizen TV – among other nationwide visual couriers of new agendas. What self-respecting PRO could in their right mind have passed up on that kind of marketing? A nice touch you’ll find available for download at Image-improvementfordummies.co.ke and cleanasababysbottom.com. 

Characteristically much later came the Cabinet Secretary announcements, anticlimactically revealing only four of a possible eighteen nominees. The images depicting UhuRuto with their sleeves rolled up with the red, blue or matching ties could not have been lost on us either, a leaf copy-pasted straight off President Obama’s playbook; as was the setup of the presidential platform at the foot of the pillars of State House, and the “brotherly love” approach to handling the media.

The immediate hullabaloo over this delay in cooking up a cabinet was counterbalanced by equally loud calls for patience, since the process of selection would only do Kenya good, hence requiring diligent input by the two Jubilee leaders. Opinionistas were quick to delve into the matter, adding the fact that it allowed Parliament to begin the vetting process on the four, notably the nominee to the National Treasury. A road sign was quickly erected, reminding us of the immediacy of the budget reading, and pointing directly at President Uhuru’s ingenuity in prioritizing that appointment. Even more pedestrian crossings allowed us to cross the reality that department of state appointments in democracies such as the motherload United States are also conducted in similar fashion. Hail the dapper UhuRuto for style, they said.

After ascertaining that we’d had enough time to mull over this perceived letdown, yesterday happened. The now sixteen member council of nominees’ credentials have since been turned into fodder on massive multi-page spreads in the National Press: a young and virile team of technocrats with the résumés, frequent flier miles and Varsity qualifications – read Diaspora education – to back them. It would be difficult to dig into a good majority of these consummate professionals before they’ve had the onus of a Cabinet track record to look back on; and so for the most part, Kenyans chose to eyeball the two final nominees, who had the ignominy of a hangman’s noose in the form of their past performances hanging over their heads.

It was indeed a masterstroke distinctive of this new regime’s style when the two final nominations came. The execution was flawless…introduce the less-maligning Balala first and fast as Mining Secretary, and what with Kenyan women’s obvious goo goo gaga reactions to both Andrew Kenneth and then-President Elect Uhuru’s son, it was hard to disagree with that logic. Much especially so when one of the bigger stains in Kenya’s conscience – if she had one – was announced next as Lands, Housing and Urban Development Secretary. A fellow blogger went as far as inaugurating the indelible ink used by the IEBC to mark voters’ pinkies as ‘the Ngilu’, aptly summarizing her hard-to-be-rid-of hard-as-nails Die Hardness. 

  

In the interests of being fundamentally unKenyan, however, let’s spot and point out the obvious flaws in this action by the president, and the equal and expectedly opposite overreaction by the public. First off, if the past 7-odd years of Mr. Kibaki’s governance have shown us anything, it’s that we the duly submissive wananchi have an impressively sturdy level of BSc, aka Bullshit compliance. After an initially quasi-smooth beginning to his term, Señor Kibaki’s government began experiencing hit after hit of graft allegations on a grand scale. Cabinet Ministers who would go on to survive both terms in cabinet were at the heart of these scandals, and no less than the Prime Minister, at the time, as well as the current President and his Deputy have since had their fair share of the corruption allegation cake.

Our national ego however quickly massaged our national conscience into submission, cushioned by echoes of a booming economy that peaked at 7 percent+ growth in 2007. Secondly, even after the election violence slammed the brakes on this impressive trajectory in the eve of that year, our precocious National Accord did precious little to bring to account all the evils of the 3-odd month chaos that rocked the country, preferring instead to lock them up in a cabinet of faux peaceful oblivion. I will hereby declare my silence on the awkward little topic of how far up that cabinet’s annals the matter of the two Suspects-in-Chief’s involvement is filed. 

Fast forward through Mr. Kibaki’s second term, right past the fact that the economy has never quite recovered to its pre-07 election pregnancy glow, police brutality caught live on tape, Ngilu’s ‘Kusema-na-Kutender’ government contract policy for her family, and arrive at the fact that these four politicians that will possibly make up Cabinet are a precipitate remnant of the systemic cancer that permeates Kenyan politics. The fact that we’re reacting so strongly to two cabinet ministerial appointments belays the beleaguered truth that the President and his Deputy are not saints either. Their power is so much more potentially weary for Kenya’s economy than a couple of Secretaries could ever be. 

Moreover, there is also the little matter of the illusion of transparency – a cousin to the delusion of maturity that was peddled regarding our peaceful elections. Mock transparency concerts have become a favorite national pastime for us. Initially given to the impression of them simply being a little passing crush, I am wont to keep that false hope up given the vetting committee that awaits this panel of preeminent secretaries. A committee that itself wrought down the Integrity bill to its bare bone to escape vetting. Yet the same institutions that have been vetted include the IEBC (Independent Electoral & Boundaries Commission), the SCoK (Supreme Court of Kenya) and the SRC (Salaries and Regulations Committee) among myriad others. And look how far ahead of the imaginary pack that has taken us! 

Vetting is a superficially pointless attempt at presenting us sanctimonious facades, behind which still sit the deep-seated structural flaws we are yet to take off our collective feet.

So as you and I continue to exercise in our national training grounds for BSc, it would behoove us to continue upgrading our UXp (User Exercise in patience) coz it’s gonna be a long ride. If UhuRuto really wish to preside over a nation devoted to balancing the historically set up equation of inequity, they might want to start by cutting their flair for the dramatic and convincingly turn their images on their heads, and with that, all the attendant melancholy their half-baked policies could inflict on Kenya.

How much BS is too much BS? Kenya is the perfect case study establishing that there is simply no answer to that question. Hopefully in Part II remember to bash the insidious Cord leadership, but for now, this seems sufficient.

    On a sidenote: 

      Of course I too thought the appointments yesterday represented one region, and part of one region alone. Runda, Nairobi. Or Muthaiga et al. The nominees have a lot in common with President UK, not least in their overwhelming affinity for the Queen's language, and an inescapable half Kikuyu + Kalenjin composition. And before you jump on my throat, I am a Kikuyu, so by stereotypical thought I readily admit to being a thief and first cousin to the president. 

That being outta the way, what I'd like to add is the fact that we need a rollerskating kinda cabinet, not a credentialist/ tribalist kind. Credentials follow the set norm. As does tribalism. Rollerskating needs you to practice being on the board - and granted, fall off it as many times as Edison's light bulb moments anti-orgasmed - till you find a way to stay on top of the board. And begin to muster it.

Enough with the propaganda already, Jubilee! An Opinion Piece by @BettyWaitherero. #KenyaniKwetu?

The following is a piece by a good friend and colleague, that on Tuesday Annoyed Powerful People [perhaps the same Dark Forces our beloved president once talked of], who proceeded to Force her To Pull It down [as they did with his hand on the Accord he signed with Mudavadi]. 

These words are her own, and have become part of her pain lately, with bile, vitriol and threats sent her own, and her parents way, ever since:

By Betty Waitherero Njoroge 

I think parents should do more than just pay for their teenagers school fees; they should go out of their way to forge a sound relationship with them, one that is not based on arrogance and violence but on mutual respect and love. Teach your kids how to be honest and clear minded adults, because the result of just ignoring your teenage miscreants is one Muthui Kariuki. (ed: same guy now coordinating the threats...) 

Talk about a juvenile delinquent; Muthui Kariuki is the epitome of a childish deviant. As government spokesman for the backside of the Jubilee government, Muthui is really good at his job. In between issuing threats while claiming to be accommodative, this character has the audacity to claim that Raila Odinga’s politics are “chest thumping, hateful, arrogant and toxic.”  

The pot calls the kettle black. For someone who has a record ZERO accomplishments as a civic leader this hot head sure brings a mouthful of trash to the table. By the way, he is a perfect representative for the Jubilee government which, despite having several stalwarts with over 20 years experience in government, have also a record of ZERO accomplishments.  

Or as one colleague expressed recently, within the first 100 days of the Kibaki administration 1 million children went to school under the free primary education program; within the first 100 days under the Jubilee administration all children were out of school.  

Of course, when you are busy doing nothing and yet being paid 76 times the average GDP, you need a mouthy person to sidetrack the people by saying all sorts of ridiculous things about perceived enemies.  

We are now to believe that despite Jubilee forming the government, and despite Jubilee dominating Parliament, the Senate and the County administrations, Raila Odinga is still the bane of Kenya and is somehow behind the many problems Jubilee is actually not dealing with.  

The propaganda machinery in this government needs to improve by the way. Couldn’t they try something more intelligent than filling the daily news with stories of men shagging livestock? Or repeatedly insulting a man you claim is insignificant. When it comes to stupid utterances, none can out do Muthui Kariuki.  

I don’t know what’s worse, some wannabe loud mouth or a president who is busy posting his latest status update in a rugby shirt. Each time I see his photos of how he was where laughing with who I feel so nauseated. Meanwhile his deputy is busy reinventing reality by calling himself a hustler. Is it the pain of the lie that makes him cry so much or what?  

A man who made a fortune through corrupt means turns around and calls it hustling, another one who spends his time goofing off turns around and complains to teachers about the high wage bill meanwhile he does nothing for the economy and in fact sanctions ridiculous expenditure.  

Now look here – why were our children out of school while you decreed that 250 million kshs will be spent on giving a retired 80 plus year old an office? Then you say the wage bill is high. It looks like it’s only high when you have to do the right thing and pay the service providers their dues.  

Meanwhile, I expect that the next thing the government will say out its backside AKA Muthui Kariuki is that there is no money to pay for the free maternity despite it being a Jubilee campaign promise. That won’t surprise me at all, because there is money for luxury planes to Congo Brazzaville and money for retired old fogeys to have an office but no money to pay teachers and of course no money for hospitals.  

I don’t even know how Uhuru Kenyatta finds the temerity to attend social functions. Wait. I get it now. He isn’t president, he is a celebrity! That’s why if he wears a rugby t-shirt, automatically he supports the rugby team with funds right? Where is that money coming from, if there is no money to pay the teachers?  

This government is beyond redemption really. Rather than attempt to be functional we are going to be submitted to 5 whole years of propaganda and hogwash. Pictures of matching ties and laughing buffoons coupled with lurid tales of political bogeymen meanwhile the entire system is incapable of any form of decent service delivery. All of this will be conducted via the dumbest outlets no less.  

This post was published on Kenya Today, with the understanding that we all have right to freedom of expression.

Viva Afrique: The Good, the Bad & the Shame of Tana Country

It’s been a month since I presumed to have what it took to level an entire county and claim that the bad and ugly in it could possibly be whitewashed by the valiant frontline made up of these young men and women: men and women of a tender age, who have risen against the tall order that is a nightmare of conceited – and bigoted – perceptions and misconceptions about a people.

While I retain the optimism with which I wrote my first piece for Storymoja’s Imagine our World, life is a continuum of moments that can – if we so choose to let them – define us.

As I write this installment on literacy in a far-flung county, the country rests against a backdrop of mutiny: in the teaching ranks and in parliament – where Members broke into the veritable rabble they truly are, to mock teachers’ pay demands with redundant chants in their support. Here’s a thought: give up the ‘astronomical emoluments’ you have been granted after you ‘arm-twisted the treasury into paying’ towards your personal kitties to ‘[buy] a sinuous limousine.’ That alone would raise nearly Kes 2 Billion for the teachers’ kitty.

But rather than sit here and develop a cancerous multi-headed dragon of an ulcer – with every single one of your portraits pasted on all their foreheads – let me remember that you are but a mirror of our own society. You’ll be happy to know that your narrow-mindedness is not unique to your class. Oh no. An educated man I know had this to say of the teachers’ industrial action:

“TSC [Teachers’ Service Commission], kindly transfer all those teachers shown demonstrating in Nai[robi] to far flung counties. ‘Choices have consequences.’ North Eastern & Tana would do!!!”

A very poor sentiment, coming from the ‘ruling elite – the stratum educated enough to know better’; what he seemed to be saying was that the teachers’ demonstrations are wrong, as is the North Eastern region, and Tana County… I did not spare him a piece of my mind; I never do, when I have a piece to spare.

To quote a friend, “I think people should listen as much as they speak [if not more] to avoid the reckless mouthfuls being thrown around. It is also important that people know that their opinions, regardless of how informed they are, will not be universally accepted; and they should be comfortable with this thought. That should be a good place to begin from.”

Chanting slogans such as “Choices have consequences!!!” does not make anyone right. A nation whose baggage of unresolved historical injustices spills into a little brother and that gives us the right to ape it? Because we have more historical injustices unresolved, all tightly packed up, accepted as part of our own litany of disdainfully ugly usikondes? Kenyans do, after all, love a sideshow. This is reflective of our own society’s lack of a sense of direction, and its general good logic of ‘acceptable’ mediocrity.

Moving on, while there is of course an aspect of sideshows-becoming-the-issue, what with the Susan Tujuanes, KTN presents: laughter, KTN presents: Ciku, Art Caffe brouhaha et al; whether it’s the issue or the sideshow we discuss, it’s all very classist. Susan the classy girl who does ‘not do fries’ went ham on a poor Joe from Eastlando, so the slum that is Kenya’s mis-educated online banditry goes ham on Susan. Art Caffe staff alleged to be racist, classist, and whatnots, and so the lower caste that has never stepped into Art Caffe reacts. One fortunate lady actually has no idea what a croissant is – or crossiant, as the menu at The Mug calls it. Cue the French Mandazi retorts from the so called upper caste.

Instead of focusing on collaboration, coming together to understand each other and forge ahead with the understanding that we coexist in ONE bloody country, we result, always do, to the lowest form of wit and shared witticisms. You don’t need to imagine it: this failed state of mind is our world.

Yet creative collaboration, even with real issues in our society, is not only necessary to progress. It is critical in our development beyond self-interests. Why does your face always have to be on the landing page of every website you own? Every issue there is to talk about? What, pray tell, do you do with your time, other than sit around and wait, hoping that another Huddah shows her boobies so you can get credits for the most retweets and shares? Or are you retarded enough to believe those shares mean anything in the market?

Nairobi is trying, if not hard enough, to be LA. A newly made British ‘friend’ says we’re building a copy of California’s infrastructure with nearly zero of its industry. I 100% agree. And while I realize that many feel they have no employ, or choice of employ, that thought in itself IS the problem. Until we realize that the people are, ideally, stronger than The Industry and The System combined, and remember that Post-Election Violence in 08 was not a Horror Movie, there’s no changing jerk. Hence there’s simply no point talking about it either.

But we’re living in a country that gives no damn about itself. Because if you feel your job sucks bad ass, it’s your fault you’re there. That you earn shit and so need tips which don’t flow from dark skins is not your employer’s fault. You made a choice; it has its consequences. The ‘nyeuthi’ guys being generalized as having been served only to give a ceiling of 50 bob tips don’t live in the bubble these generalized high-tipping wazungus and absolutely ignored other races do. I guess we can rest the classist vs racist case in pieces.

Tips are not essential to your job, so quit acting like they are already, and get a real job. Where you get paid for what you do, and how you do it, not because you think you deserve it! Watch a few sports – I’d suggest football – and soon you might learn that deserving to win, and winning, are two very alien concepts.

As we established earlier, having an opinion does not entitle anyone to being listened to. Ergo, you do not have to listen to me.

However, if you’re still reading, another opinion:

“Not everybody is like that; many accept the choices and conditions of others. I’m an agnostic atheist, hopelessly straight, 1% biker, geek, nerd, Gamer, and much more similar crap, but I accept people of all religions, homosexuality and all the spectrum of consensual sexual orientations, weekenders, cagers, athletes and whatever, so long as they do not want to change me, from my freakiness to their freakiness.
At the end, it’s a question of tolerance, of quid pro quo.”

We’ll call this a re-introduction to my piece on Tana County. Simply because talking about literacy, with all this fucking illiteracy floating about, beats the shit out of any conceptual framework I would intend to pass on through any form of report on the Tana County literacy project.

I’ll end with a couple of quotes from a Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi talk:

On Classist separations of complaint:

“Complaining about our problems is an art form [for Nigerians]… But if a European were to say the same things … to recite the same litany of complaints exactly, Nigerians become defensive; sometimes angrily so. I have always been curious of this brand of defensiveness, which I myself often exhibit, by the way. It seems to me that we have it because we assume that the complaining Nigerian is aware that Nigeria is not only about its problems; is aware of the human complexities; knows of the intelligence and ingenuity of people; knows how they cry and laugh; knows what motivates them; what they aspire to, and what they find meaningful. And we suspect that the European – entrenched in a view of us as ‘needers’ of charity – does not know these other stories, about us…”

On the illusion of Privilege:

“That I understand the structural setup of the world, speak better English and send my relatives money, does not make me morally or metaphysically better … than them.”

The Struggle Within, The Struggle Without: #OccupyParliament [Part II]

"Assembly, demonstration, picketing and petition.

37. Every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities."

 Continued from part I

All well and swell, were it not for the fact that some overzealous protestor(s) went round, intimidating fellow protestors by threatening to ‘beat them down’ with their placards if they did not sit down. 

I walked across the road at this juncture; about 10 meters from where the protestors sat. The interpretation of peaceably and unarmed  seemed to be persistently tested by loose nuts in the crowd repeatedly. Not once, by the organizers, however.

By now, the show-of-force shock-and-awe campaign by the police forces was becoming more and more effective in its choreography; horsemen galloping past protestors and back again, trucks full of GSU - as well as Riot - policemen, cruising back and forth.

• I had been consistently expressing my reservations to Aficionado, and as I watched the Swine Truck back up towards Parliament, we mused at what was going on. As soon as I realized there were pigs in the truck, correlating the pigs to the chants on slaughter, I expressed my hope that it was not going to be slaughtered pigs on display.

One of the men next to me, apparently fed up with my bickering, turned on me with a barrage of bullets disguised as words. Questioning my ‘allegiance’ and basically giving me the ‘if you’re not for us you’re against us’ speech. 

Two things: 

I will never sit and watch in silence as something I believe is wrong goes down.

And, at the end of the day, symmetry is overrated. 

I was not there to join protestors, but there to protest. For Kenya, not for Occupy Parliament, so to speak. That is to say that some of the protestors could be wrong, and I wouldn't have had to join them in being wrong. 

But Kenya, whether wrong or right, I had to defend. 

This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world. And while she looks so sad in photographs, I absolutely love her, when she smiles

-          Nine Days

• When the pigs were finally let out, the first thing I saw was the pighead held high, bloody where the neck had been cut. I have since come to learn that the pighead was not part of the protest. Not by the protest organization’s doing anyway. A madman in this market had thought it striking imagery to bring the head with him. 

And it was, striking imagery. 

An image that struck back.

Because, I maintain, this is what triggered the forceful dispersion of the otherwise largely peaceful protest. This head, added to the blood that was bought by organizers at a slaughterhouse in Dagoretti and poured on the pigs – which then went ahead to have their feel and fill of the macabre display of body fluid – only served to further aggravate the image.

That, right there, was strike 3.

Leave and Bicker

At which point, frustrated at yet another chance to shift perceptions, I left. The fact that this was a successful protest is not in contention here. That it was. Hugely successful, in getting the will of Kenyans across. More successful, in getting across the foot-down-on-them response by this government. 

But the few sour elements, elements that Bonnie and crew could not in truth be expected to control, sallied the display.

I got away, fast and furious, and by the time I got to the Hilton Hotel, the Fire Brigade was headed up Moi Avenue, in a series of beelines and turns, for the protestors.

Hear Jeer, and Sneer

On to Social Media for the due post-mortem then. There were those who sat back, heard others complain about the blood and ‘slaughter,’ and in turn sneered their responses at those who jeered. 

The most common criticism was that we who protested the sideshows in the protest had missed the big picture.

That those who had a problem with how things were done should get off their arses and do something that can be judged, not simply bitch about everything. True.

As you tell 'complainers' what to do, from within the confines of your Internet Security.

That the politicians’ pay rises were what we should have focused on. True.

Yet a sideshow was in fact created, in the way of the pighead. The pigs and blood alone would have been no major issue to me, turned off as I am by blood. The head, though, was overkill. And not the organizers’ fault.

But until Boniface Mwangi explained that yesterday morning, we whose sensibilities were so offended, had no way of knowing that it wasn't.

Like the legend of the phoenix, all ends with beginnings … We’ve, come too far, to give up, who we are. So let’s, raise the bar, and our cups, to the stars…

-          Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams & Nile Rodgers

Hear Jeer, Cheer at Jeer

Then came the pig jokes on Twitter. Which soon accepted and moved on to Facebook and Parliament. Some were admittedly hilarious, but once again, the big picture was missed by Kenyans eager for a Retweet based on the lowest form of wit; ridicule.

Hear Cheer, Jeer at Cheer

Soon enough the people who cheered on the protestors' bravery, in the face of being mauled by the hounds that are our Kenyan anti-riot forces, were subjected to sniggers; one particular tweet referred to protestors as being on the street for their own amusement. 

It’s hard not to lose your cannons when such bullshit flies across your timelines.

They forgot that as they cracked their jokes, deriding the protestors, we – those who were beaten and those who were missed alike – had managed to do something the idle armchair philosophers had not.

We were heard. We could not be ignored.

I had a dream, it was golden. There was a king, he sent soldiers. They had orders to tear us apart. So we ran and ran, and they chased and chased. We were huge, we were tall. They were weak, they were small. And at last we were free, we could save. Sound the horn, call the cavalry. Together we’re invincible.

-          Lemar

In Conclusion, I understand now, what Bonnie and crew, what we, did on Tuesday. They know, they must, that the pigs and blood will be a whip to sensibilities and sensitivities, and a harsher whip to those sprung off their hips. 

Yet, I can only imagine, they have a pragmatic approach to their protest and activism. Bonnie got ribbed by government security once again yesterday, center of focus that he is; but he understands that the good of the many overrides the good of the one.

Until you have done something for humanity, you should be ashamed to die.

-          Horace Mann

We need to end the heartbreak warfare. Lose the grey areas and pick a side. Either you are with the protest or against it. If you are for, then be for; express your opinions either way, but at the end of the day, remember the issues.

Are you still talking about the protest? Some, a good number, are. International and Local Media included. Discourse has been resurrected, a new kind of discourse. A passionate form of discourse, whether for or against, the revolutionary road. That, is victory. 

• On a sidenote, those who were arrested have been charged with animal rights abuse. Do we have animal rights' legislation in Kenya? Like my friend Michael asks here, was the case in which a porn director at the Coast was charged for engaging women in bestiality last week, also charged on animal rights' abuse?

• The police have said that they were forced to act with violence because the rights of Muslims were impinged upon by the use of pigs to symbolize MPs in the struggle. First off, I’m sure it would have made no difference if the pigs were actually vultures shot down and weighed down with stones, so as to not fly off.

And, are we really going to sit here and pretend, in this country, that we give that much of a damn about Muslim sensibilities, in justification of hosing down and tearing up peaceful protestors?

Excerpt from a post on Seven Sentences.

• We each only have 24 hours in a day, but greatness breaks time down, examining each action frame by frame, bringing forth much clarity. 

• The ability to see clearly, prioritize and make great decisions in a heated moment, marks greatness. 

• How can you learn to slow down time? 

• You must learn to relax and become the master of your emotions.

The Heartbreak Warfare - #OccupyParliament [Part I]

Anyone who takes a cursory glance at my Digital Timelines may already know that I suffer from an advanced case of foot on keypad syndrome. I think it... I tweet or update it. No forethought, and sometimes, if left to my own devices, no afterthought either.

Such was the case on Tuesday; a case that has taught me to question. To ask. To be patient in my resolve to neither ignore nor be ignored.

And upon some rather impressively mature – not so common in my book – reflection, some notions I expressed after leaving #OccupyParliament shamefully missed the big picture. I will now attempt to elucidate it. A swipe or two unavoidable ones will be taken at some ass-wipes, but otherwise, this time I quite fully agree with Bonnie's way. We're in a war, and it's about time we choose a side and stick with it.

Lightning strike… dreams of ways to understand my pain. Clouds of sulfur in the air, bombs are falling everywhere... it’s heartbreak warfare. Disappointment has a name [no one really ever wins] in heartbreak warfare… 

I swear to God we’re gonna get it right, if you lay your weapons down.

-          John Mayer

 Stop and Join

We left Freedom Corner at Uhuru Park, or as I call it, FC President Park, after about an hour of morale boosting chants and speeches from the likes of the revolutionary Reverend Timothy Njoya. It was quite an honour meeting the man, by which I mean being within 5 feet of him. 

His arrival, with the stripes he earned from the Nyayo regime’s boots, added more ‘legitimacy’ to the protest for me. In that there was a certain intangible euphoric patriotism his presence evoked for me; and, I’m sure, for many more.

As we left the corner, with press cars holding up traffic behind the procession and policemen walking by us, it was hard to ignore their palpable show of nuanced intimidation. They did, after all, while ‘protecting us,’ have tear gas canister guns in hand, and full riot gear to boot.

Yet, I was impressed to find some Kenyans joining the procession, one they seemed to have no idea was planned to happen. They read the placards. They agreed with the message. They joined. Idle Kenyans, some who sit on benches in the day, others who sleep on these benches in the night; but not idle of their own doing, I would posit. If anything, they embodied the very injustice we were there to protest.

40 million, held at ransom by a mere 4 hundred.

Stop and Stare

We beat a path through Kenyatta Avenue, into Moi Avenue; drumline a-timed, heading up the drumlin towards the symbols of impunity erected on Harambee Avenue, percussions a-costumed, lungs a-wailing as we headed on to Parliament Road.

Kenyans stopped; and stared. Being my first proper protest march, I mused, almost amused. Were they stopping, standing by the side of the roads in their droves, sitting in the various Coffee stalls that litter the CBD, Central Business District, because they were scared? Afraid to join us? 

Or were they giving us a guard of honour? 

If so, were we dignitaries? Or heroes fallen in war?

Perhaps, however, they were just disgusted enough not to join us, but still curious enough to stay and watch; hoping to witness the battle go down, when, inevitably, the long whip of the law cracked on our hides.

Standing to gaze or seated to watch us, they personified the struggle within our ranks. Passive passengers in the accident we call a justice system. I mean, you can watch. But you can’t join?

There is no failure. There is only feedback.

Hear and Jeer

The windows in every building the procession went by served as big screen reality TVs, connected real-time to a world just within reach, not quite within touch. We do love our reality shows, our Kard- and jubilated CORD-ashians. 

The voyeurs filled up every space on every opening, to watch the world beneath them. On rooftops. On illegal ‘smoking zones’ in the way of mezzanines.

Some seemed overly bemused, somewhat appalled in their disagreement. Particularly those employed on the government’s Avenue, Harambee. The same kind of people who 24 hours later, upon hearing that I was at the protest, sneered and asked, ‘Kufanya nini? - Doing what?’

Fighting for MY and mine's rights. YOURS too, by extension, but mine and mine's first.

Hear and Cheer

Then there were those who heard us, and took an early lunch break to ‘join us,’ waving and cheering us on from within their offices. 

I salute you all. 

I understand that unlike me – unemployed to some, self-employed to me – you could not join the struggle. Your thoughts mattered, as did those of the many Kenyans not working within the CBD or Nairobi, or Kenya even, who resonate with our slight forbearance on Kenya’s loan, owed to the justice sector.

Stay and Bicker

I may be alone on this one. I enjoyed my participation in the ‘democratic right’ to protest. 

I chanted. 

I also could not help but note. Note that we focused a little too much on the negatives. Chants of ‘wasaliti – traitors,’ and ‘mapambano – conflict (in the context used)’ as well as ‘Kanyaga – crush them’ echoed through the city. I have little qualm with that.

I do, however, believe that we should not ALWAYS protest against…it’s an easy ride to get on board, a bandwagon that focuses on the problem. Protest, chant, let us, for something. I did manage, with a certain degree of success, to pass this message across to some of my fellow protestors. The chant I asked for, was ‘Kenya yetu – Our Kenya.’

Simple. Effective. We rocked Harambee Avenue, reminding the Treasury, the Central Bank, Judiciary and the KICC among other buildings who cared notice, that it is, is Kenya – ours.

Just as we went past the Office of the Deputy President, a sobering moment came to pass, and in quick succession precipitated a chain of events that teed me off; saw me leave the protest livid and seething fire through my pacifist nostrils. This was where the poetry ended, and the dull prose began.

•  Two General Service Unit (GSU) trucks came cruising at break leg speed, pummeling a hole straight through our stand against the system, as we scattered to avoid being barreled down.

• Then, as we approached the roundabout onto Parliament Road off Harambee Avenue, the chant turned from the constant against mindset to a for mindset. What was the chant for, you ask? ‘Manguruwe, chinja. Manguruwe, chinja chinja! – Slaughter the pigs!’ 

I began to ask myself if that, really, was what we were for. Slaughtering.

MPs are only symbolically pigs, meaning a symbolic slaughter. 

But yelling that Pigs should be slaughtered, in a nation that has yet to heal from the 3 months of slaughter we went through post-2007 elections, was a message that could be easily misconstrued. I quickly noted the same to my friend Aficionado (who, incidentally, had taken the black and white dress code and run with it in true style); she too had noticed it and stopped chanting.

• When we got outside parliament, things went south relatively fast. There was a vuta nikuvute (tag of war) between the protestors at the frontline and the riot police, about putting banners up on Parliament’s perimeter fence. The protestors made their first mistake. Perhaps for the aesthetic value the banners would have in the evening News, they persisted. 

And won.

Strike 1. You do not win, against the riot police and their battle-reinforced egos.

• Some loose cannon then decided to hurl a bullhorn (megaphone) into parliament. There were parliament personnel standing near where the speaking-horn fell.

Strike 2. You do not give the riot police any excuse to attack you.

• The organizers, Bonnie and Gaceke among others, to avoid provoking the riot police any further, requested the protestors to sit down, on the tarmac. 

They read out Article 37 of the Kenyan constitution:

"Assembly, demonstration, picketing and petition.

37. Every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities."

All well and swell, were it not for the fact that some overzealous protestor(s) went round, intimidating fellow protestors by threatening to ‘beat them down’ with their placards if they did not sit down. 

Continued in Part II